Brute Force Rare Retrospective

Not an abandoned project as such, Brute Force was, for some time, the game we know as Killer Instinct today. The compulsory trademark check is a lengthy and knee-breakingly expensive process which can come relatively late in a project’s life, so it’s nothing out of the ordinary to have to change the original title two or three times before arriving at a name that hasn’t already been stamped with a copyright somewhere in the world.
A fair chunk of KI’s development was carried out under its working title, much of which was substantially changed before the final version hit the streets – names, character designs and gameplay elements underwent constant surgery during Brute Force’s life. This early Glacius render shows how the character evolved from what was fundamentally your common or garden alien killing machine into a far more interesting figure of persecution (no, really): while the initial female character, known as both ‘Roxy Rave’ and ‘Wanda’ during her brief existence, served as a very early prototype for Orchid. A couple of Roxy’s most endearing assets were, of course, faithfully retained. Ahem.
It’s common knowledge to most die-hard KI fans that Cinder was previously called ‘Magma’ and ‘Meltdown’, but those are far from all the name changes that came about during development. In fact only Jago, Glacius and Eyedol survived with their original names intact: for example, how many of you knew that Riptor was once referred to as ‘Toxin’, Spinal as ‘Argo’, Sabrewulf as ‘Newton’ and Combo as, er… ‘Mr. Fist’? So you see how badly things could have turned out. Think yourselves lucky.